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Harriet Spooner
Harriet Spooner is a dorky, sweet girl with a big heart and a passion for science. With her insatiable curiosity and thirst for new knowledge, she has enthusiastically taken to the world of the Supernatural. Personality Harriet Spooner is a sweet, if not somewhat awkward girl, with a big heart and a burning enthusiasm for learning. An avid science enthusiast, Harriet is extremely curious about the world around her, but-ironically-tends to bury herself in her books and projects. With her social anxiety and somewhat awkward nature, she never had any friends previous to moving to New Orleans and has never really felt like she's fit in anywhere. As she's beginning to find her place in the community of New Orleans; a community brimming with vampires, werewolves, witches and other ilk, this is slowly beginning to change as Harriet is beginning to find her place in the world. With her social anxiety and general tendency to avoid crowded or public places, there are very few people who actually know Harriet beyond her stammering, painfully shy and generally awkward demeanor. For those rare few who are let into Harriet's world, however, they re quick to discover that her painful shyness and eccentric mannerisms belie a sweet, dorky, exciteable and tenacious person with a warm heart and an eagerness to make everyone around her happy. Compassionate to a fault and with an eagerness to listen, Harriet makes an easy ally and a loyal friend. Surprisingly, though Harriet has displayed an immense amount of difficulty in standing up for herself, she has also displayed a willingness to stand up for those around her and she can be fiercely protective of her friends and family. Harriet would fight to the death to defend these people and, in spite of her generally timid nature, she can be surprisingly bold in a fight; throwing herself into the thick of combat, no matter the odds, when the people she cares about are in danger. More than anything, Harriet is a tenacious person and what she lacks in brute strength and skill, she more than makes up for in sheer determination and grit. Owing to this, Harriet has taken fairly quickly to even the more brutal aspects of the Shadow World and, though she by no means prefers violence, she has displayed a willingness to do whatever it takes to defeat evil and defend the people she loves. From the first time Harriet picked up a book, she has been an avid reader whose enthusiastic nature and tenacity quicklky propelled her through nearly every book at her local library. Owing to this, Harriet is well versed on a number of subjects and has memorized literally hundreds of strange factoids. Most of these facts tend to be related to the fields of Astrophysics and Biology, though Harriet is also well versed in Behavioral Sciences, Earth and Life Sciences and History. Passionate about her areas of interest, Harriet has a tendency to ramble on or get carried away about her subjects when left unchecked, with her enthusiasm often getting the better of her. Alternatively, Harriet also tends to fall back on these subjects when she's nervous, often using her expertise as a sort of shield that she can fall behind when she feels that she's out of her comfort zone. A natural Type-A person prone to extreme bouts of anxiety and panic attacks, Harriet finds she has a very limmited sense of a comfort zone with the only time she truly feels safe and secure being when she's tucked away in her labratory or hiding behind a book. Owing to a combination of factors, including a history of being teased and a naturally shy disposition, Harriet has never been comfortable in social situations and she has a tendency to get overwhelmed and flustered quite easily. She will often "wind mill" her arms when she's nervous and she also has a tendency to stammer, stutter, freeze up or, if worse comes to worse, to hyperventilate and panic. Never truly at ease in most social situations, Harriet also has a tendency to try to shut out the world around her via hiding behind her headphones or simply avoiding them altogether. This is a defense mechanism she ultimately learned from years of avoiding the whispers, snickers and cruel comments of her peers and she has buildt up a habit of falling back on it. Unfortunately, however, these unusual tendencies often serve to only alienate Harriet further from the people around her and many find her awkward comments and seeming inability to relax more than a little offputting. Owing to this, Harriet never really had many friends previous to her time in New Orleans and she was often chided and teased even in the small circle of friends she did have. Due to this, Harriet has always felt largely alone in the world, with her only steadfast and constant companion being her faithful lab assistant, a french bulldog by the name of Yoda. With her lack of confidence and timid nature, Harriet has an immense amount of difficulty reaching out and connecting with her peers and she can become easily embarrassed and painfully tense in social scenarios. With her innate difficulty in connecting with her peers, Harriet sometimes has a tendency to go above and beyond in an effort to overcompensate and reach people on their level. Harriet tries to achieve this by emulating that which she perceives as popular on television, movies and books, though owing to the relative outdatedness of many of these and her own shelteretedness, she often manages to only further embarrass herself. In spite of this, Harriet is the last person to give up and her general enthusiasm, eagerness to listen and golden heart has slowly begun to earn her friends where her frank lack of "hipness" has failed her. A natural tinkerer, Harriet enjoys discovering how things work and she enjoys taking various appliances apart just for the opportunity to examine all of the various parts. This love for tinkering has also contributed to Harriet being something of an inventor, though owing to the grandness of her own ideas-which can range from everything from homemade rocket ships to robot assistants and time machines, her inventions are not usually all that successful. In spite of this lack of success, Harriet has never managed to fully abandon any of her many strange projects, which she simply consider "works in progress." She is extremely passionate about these projects and they're very precious to her. For Harriet, who never had many friends or connections to the world outside of her labratory, her inventions aren't just an assimilation of various parts and mechanims; they're her friends and, owing partially to this, she has even taken to naming them. Of course, when Harriet isn't attempting to converse with R2D2 or C3PO, she can also often be found organizing or cataloguing the enormous bins of various essays, scientific journals and articles that serve as a foundation for much of her research. Never sure of what her future projects might call for, Harriet is extremely reluctant to ever throw anything away. As such, her room-though painfully neat-is also cluttered with the many artifacts of her previous works. A passionate person, Harriet is never one to do anything half heartedly. She pours every ounce of herself into her projects, often to the point of her own detriment. Harriet will not stop once she has put her mind to something and, no matter how many times she might fail at a task, she is the last to give up on it. As she would be quick to say "I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that don't work," and even if the quote is by a hack, she thinks there's a lot of wisdom in it. For Harriet, the thrill of trial end error is just as exciting and important for her as the actual and final thrill of discovery and she has a tendency to spend hours on her various experiments, tucked away in her lab, neither tiring nor wavering in her conviction. When absorbed in her projects, there's nothing else for Harriet in the whole world: her anxiety disappears and even her confidence grows as she becomes more and more emboldened with her successes. The caveat to this, however, is the risk Harriet runs of becoming lost in her projects and isolating herself from the world around her. Another unfortunate tendency Harriet has is her tendency to obsess and she can become easily absorbed in even the most minute details of her projects. A natural perfectionist, Harriet also tends to be over-critical of herself and she tends to greatly downplay her achievements. This perfectionism, when combined with her unwavering enthusiasm and never say die attitude can be somewhat dangerous at times as well, and Harriet has a tendency to neglect even the most basic tennants of self care (such as sleeping and eating) when she loses herself in a project. Alternatively, when Harriet's projects ultimately fail or when she feels that she has not lived up to her full potential, she can also become extremely marose, with a tendency to lock herself in her darkened bedroom for days afterwards where she'll do little but sleep and listen to techno music. Fortunately, these bouts aren't very common and Harriet is usually able to bounce back from them on her own. When Harriet isn't geeking out about dark matter, meteorology or the exact distance between the sun and the Earth, she is often geeking out about Han Solo, Chewbacah, Spock and Captain Kirk. A sci-fi nerd with a deep love for Star Wars, Star Trek and a vast myriad of comic books, Harriet's love for this genre is truly immense. As such, Harriet tends to color the world around in the terms of her beloved stories and she often compares her friends and the people she most admires to superheroes. An idealistic person whose enthusiasm for learning can sometimes blind her to the very real dangers in the world around her, Harriet also has a surprising tendency of leaping before looking and she's quick to dive head in to even the most dangerous situation for the possiblity of an interview or a chance to collect some precious piece of data. All in all, Harriet is a sweet, passionate if not slightly dorky scientist who has quickly found herself immersed in the world of the Supernatural. History ''Early Childhood '' Harriet was born in the small town of Jerusalem, Maine to Bill and Cassandra Spooner. A frail child who suffered from constant bouts of illness and inexplicable fainting spells, Harriet was homeschooled for the better part of her youth and she spent her youngest days hidden in cupboards or under her bed where she would lose herself in her books and videogames. A curious child fascinated by even the most minute and seemingly mundane detials, Harriet was constantly asking questions of anyone who would listen with the subjects of her inquiries ranging from why the sky was blue to how the stars stayed in the sky to whether or not it would be possible to grow enough hair on a human body to look like Chewbaccah. When her Mother, a stay at home Mom and hopeful artist was ultimately unable to answer her questions, Harriet began to search out her answers in the books around the house.By and large, her favorite book was her Father's copy of "The World Book Encylcopedia" and she would often spend entire days pouring over the various pages with rapt fascination. Born a mere year apart, Harriet was always fairly close with her younger brother and the two woud often spend entire afternoons together, playing video games and watching movies. Owing to Harriet's frail nature and propensity for fainting, she wasn't usually allowed to play outside unspervised, so the two would make do inside the house, building forts and having sleepovers. By and large, Matthew was Harriet's only friend during this time and her most constant companion. ''An Ice Cream Truck & A Chance Meeting '' When Harriet was six years old, while sitting outside one day on the front steps whiling away the hours until her brother got home, a young boy named Chuck and his friend Ruby flagged her down and persuaded her to chase down the ice cream truck with them, which they had narrowly missed coming down their block. Harriet knew that she wasn't supposed to leave the front yard, but in spite of her better judgment, found herself going along with the kids all the same. The three shared in a breathless adventure, tearing through the neighborhood in an effort to catch up with the truck and, in spite of the ultimate failure of their adventure, Harriet found herself having a blast all the same. With her relative isolation and loneliness, Harriet was thrilled to have made two friends and she began to make a haibt of waiting on the front porch steps for them to get out of school, after which time, the three would play together in Harriet's front yard, have sleepovers and play make believe. Harriet found herself extremely happy in the company of her new companions, and, slowly her health began to improve. ''A Budding Scientist '' One day, when Harriet was eight years od, she heard on the news that a meteor storm was predicted to pass overhead. Thrilled with the opportunity to witness one of these celestial events, Harriet convinced her friends to join her and she waited outside all day and well into the night with bated breath for the event. When it finally happened, Harriet discovered two important things. Beneath the light of the shooting stars, she discovered a deep awe and reverence for outer space and she discovered that she was also in love with her friend, Chuck. She didn't share this latter discovery with her friend, but decided that she would wait until she was older and the time was right. Her newfound love for Astronomy, however, she was quick to divulge and as her room became cluttered with various star charts, books on astronomy and physics, her passion and enthusiasm for the subject quickly became evidnet to anyone and everyone who would listen. For long hours, Harriet would excitedly and breathlessly explain her various discoveries and findings and though her Mom found Harriet's growing obsession a bit strange, Harriet's Father was quick to encourage his daughter, assuring her that if she wanted to find a way to travel to other galaxies and explore the undiscovered regions of outerspace and she worked hard, that she could do it. In an effort to show his support, he gifted Harriet her first telescope when she was ten and it became, by and large, her most prized possession. She would stay up long into th enight, staring through the small lens and working to identify and memorize the various constellations, clusters and planets that she could find. Fascinated by the concept of space and time travel witnessed in her favorite movies and the various comic books she read, Harriet also became enthralled with the idea of invention and she would spend long hours taking apart the various appliances around her house in an effort to examine their various parts and gain a better understanding of their inner workings. When she inevtiably broke whatever it was she had taken apart, Harriet would also attempt to salvage the parts from the garbage in an effort to build other things, but her inventions-by and large-were usually unsuccessful. In spite of this, Harriet was never deterred, with her enthusiasm and passion for invention, physics and astronomy only growing by the day. Unfortunately, however, not everyone shared in Harriet's enthusiasm and when Chuck one day explained to her that "space stuff was lame", Harriet lost some of her confidnece and began to clam up more around her friends, instead becoming more solitary in her various studies. In spite of this, Harriet continued to treasure the time she did manage to spend with her friends and the small crush she had developed on Chuck only grew over the years, unbeknownst to him-of course. ''School Time '' By the time Harriet was eleven, her fainting spells grew further and farther between, to the point where Harriet's Mom decided that it was time for Harriet to go to school. Terrified at the prospect of this abrupt change, Harriet pleaded to be allowed to stay on at home, but her Mother insisted. It wasn't normal, she decided, for anyone to spend as much time locked in their room as she did. If anything, the change would do Harriet a world of good, or so her Mom claimed. Unfortunately, however, the change was everything and more that Harriet feared it would be. With her awkward demeanor, enthusiasm for science and propensity for stammering and clamming up, Harriet was shunned and teased by her new classmates who dubbed her "the weird kid" and actively ostracized her from group activities and recess. Harriet's friends, who happened to be in class with her, tried to stand up for her at first, though once they began to share in the brunt of the teasing on her behalf, this slowly began to change. Gradually, Harriet found herself spending more and more time alone at lunch and recess, and though her friends continued to spend time with her after school, she found herself largely alone while she was there. The only reprieve Harriet found there was in the School's Science Fair, which she eagerly joined with the intention of building the world's first ever time machine. In order to do so, Harriet decided that she needed an adequate working space and she convinced her Father to turn the largely unused basement into her labratory. In spite of the fact that her time machine was, ultimatley, a failure which she electrocuted herself on no less than three times, Harriet found that the time she spent designing, outlining and building her project thrilling. She would go on to join the Science Fair every year after this, laboring for the better part of a year over her inventions, hopeful that-every year-would be the year that one of them actually succeeded. ''Pain & Humiliation '' For Harriet's twelfth birthday party, Harriet's Mom decided that it would be good for Harriet to have her classmates over for her birthday, which she decided to host at the local swimming pool. Harriet tried to fight her Mom on the decision, insisting that she wanted to go to the zoo for her birthday, but her Mom refused and instead forced Harriet to hand out personal invitations at school for her party. Much to Harriet's surprise, nearly every kid in her class showed up to the party (mostly for the pizza and birthday cake) and in spite of the fact that no one at the party, barring Ruby and Chuck acutally talked to her, Harriet was beginning to think that the pool party idea wasn't so bad after all. All of that changed, however, while in the locking room. After changing into her swim suit, Harriet was met with a birage of laughter, snickers and cruel comments by some of the girls in her class, who made fun of Harriet's pale skin and freckles. When one particularly clever kid named her the "freakly ginger albino snowman", Harriet burst into tears and ran into a bathroom stall where she hid for the remainder of the party. Harriet's confidence was greatly wounded by this and she retreated even further inwards after this. When the comments didn't stop after the party, Harriet also took to hiding behind her headphones in an effort to drown out the cruel comments, pretending that she couldn't hear what was being said about her and she also began to develop panic attacks. Unfortunately, matters didn't improve any as-that summer-both Chuck and Ruby moved off of the culdesac and her younger brother began to develop a social circle of his own, leaving Harriet-once again-largely alone. ''The Mad Scientist & her Faithful Companion '' Over the years, Harriet continued to delve deeper and deeper into her many projects, spending more and more time in her labratory where she would tinker with her various inventions and get lost in the labrynth of research that came before hers. What Harriet lacked in friends, she began to make up for with her inventions and she even managed to create two labratory assistant robots, C3PO and R2D2. In spite of their many quirks and ultimate failure to do even the simplest tasks assigned to them, Harriet found a sort of comfort in her lab partners who never chided her for her tendency to ramble or awkward habits, but who would instead listen patiently, shine flashlights where she needed them or-more often than not-where she didn't need them and, most importantly, give her the company that she so craved. In spite of this "comanionship", Harriet continued to feel the sting of her loneliness and was-therefore-incredibly appreciative of the gift she received on her fourteenth birthday party, a french bulldog whom she affectionately dubbed "Yoda" who quickly became her official lab partner and assistant. Harriet loved her dog fiercely and she quickly found a kindred spirit in his strange mannerisms and eccentric habits. This new friend greatly aided in quenching the loneliness that Harriet felt and she began to use her dog as a sounding board, spending long hours venting to him about the frustration she felt over her failed experiments, about how much she hated school and how much she desperately wanted to tell Chuck how she felt. Yoda always listened patiently and there were times where Harriet sometimes felt that he actually understood her. ''The Worst Six Months Ever '' In the middle of Harriet's junior year, things began to change around Harriet's house. At first the changes were fairly sublte. Harriet's Mom, ususally punctual to the point of painfulness, began to slip in her habits and she became more and more forgetful about picking her children up from school on time and more and more concerned about The Women's Circle she starte dup in the community and the various causes which they took up, which included liberating women, finding their inner goddesses and rejecting-at all costs-the constant oppression they faced against men. Concerned that Harriet was also being oppressed, she attempted to liberate Harriet via throwing away her dresses and any books or movies which she considered as "harmful to her female psyche." Matters only worsened as Harriet's parents began to fight more and more and, eventually, Harriet's Mom began to forget to pick her up from school altogether, forcing her to choose between walking the four miles home or suffering from a panic attack abraod the public school bus. Owing to this, Harriet began to grow bitter against her Mom and her Women's Circle, though it wasn't until Harriet's Mom failed to deliver a vital component to her latest Science Fair project in favor of the latter that Harriet finally grew truly resentful. Even with her Mother's erratic changes in behavior and increasing distance from her family, Harriet was truly shocked when, shortly before her birthday, her Mom announced to the family that she would be divorcing their Father and liberating herself from the shackles of his male oppression. Devestated, Harriet attempted to convince her Mother to stay and-when this failed-Harriet suffered a panic attack and locked herself in her room for the better part of the week where she slipped into a deep depression which not even Astrophysics could take her out of. Even with this devestating blow, Harriet's spirits were lifted slightly when Chuck called her shortly after this and asked to meet up with her over ice cream. Harriet had never gone out with Chuck before without Ruby and she was hopeful of the miraculous possbility that Chuck was interested in pursuing a date with her. Harriet spent all day getting ready and excitedly joined him at the Mall. Over ice cream, Harriet waited for bated breath to hear the words that she had so longed to hear, and was instead devestated as Chuck admitted to Harriet that he had apparently had a crush on Ruby for the better part of the last year. He had apparently taken Harriet out, hopeful that she knew the kinds of flowers that Ruby liked, because he figured Harriet-of all people-woudl apparently remember something like that. Crushed beyond belief, Harriet attempted to help her friend nonetheless and she watched with a broken heart as her two friends began happily dating the weekend after. In a fit of despair, Harriet destroyed the poems that she had written for Chuck over the years (which she had been saving for the day that she finally summoned enough courage to admit her feelings) and she spent the better part of the next week crying herself to sleep. Harriet was sure that things couldn't possibly get worse than this. As Thomas Fuller had once pointed out "The darkest hour is always just before dawn." Unfortunately, however, Harriet was soon to discover that Thomas Fuller was full of balogna. Shortly a month after being abandoned by her Mother and being forced to watch from the shadows as her two friends found the happiness together that she so longed for, Harriet discovered that her Grandmother, who had been fighting cancer for the better part of the year, had finally passed away in her sleep. Harriet's Mother didn't come home from the funeral. To add further insult to an already sizeable injury, Harriet also discovered that the family cat, Garfield (who had been a member of the Spooner family since she was five) had slipped out of the door unnoticed while Matt was taking out the garbage. He was hit by a car and, tragically, succumbed to his injuries a few days later. Harriet spent the better part of the remainder of the Summer locked away in her labratory with only Yoda and her lab assistants as her companions. When she discovered that her Father had received a promotion in New Orleans, Harriet attempted to show support and enthusiasm for the idea, but inwardly-the idea of changing her entire life and everything she had ever known was frankly terrifying to her. She slipped further and further into her studies, burying her grief and depression in her inventions and the comfort of her research, never anticipating the secrets that her family was hiding or just how very much her life was about to irrevocably change. Notable Accomplishments What have they done? Put a bullet-point list here. Notable Victories A bullet-point list of notable victories goes here. Relationships with Others Of her two parents, Harriet has always been decidedly closer with her Father, Bill Spooner. Unlike her Mother, who found Harriet's 'obsession' with science more than a little unhealthy, Harriet's Father always supported her strange hobbies and he was always there to cheer on the successes of her experiments and various projects at The Science Fair. Harriet has also always found an easy listener in her Father and he, more than anyone, served as the sounding board for many of her early ideas and passionate ramblings. Harriet loves her Father, and her genuine respect for him makes it difficult for her to break the rules that he sets down. Genuinely seeing her Father as someone "cool", Harriet also has a tendency to look up to her Dad and she often goes to him for advice when she feels out of her element. As this is often the case, the two have had many late night discussions over cocoa on the various inner workings of social etiquette. Since the divorce, Harriet has become even closer to her Father and she can be extremely defensive of him, especially where her Mother is concerned. In contrast to the very positive relationship Harriet shares with her Father, Harriet shares a very distant relationship with her Mother, an eccentric feminist who recently left her Father in favor of her "liberation." Harriet resents her Mother for abandoning the family, for forgetting to pick her up from school, for forgetting about her science fair projects and just forgetting about her in general. Harriet feels that she's unimportant to her Mom, or at least not half as important as her "inner female goddess" and this has caused Harriet a lot of pain. Of course, the bitterness that Harriet feels towards her Mother is outshined only by how enormously hurt she is and there is apart of Harriet, deep down, that blames herself for her Mother's leaving. Harriet knows that this isn't rational, but simply a byproduct of the unclear reasons for her Mother's absence, but this doesn't stop her from occasionally wishing that she had been reason enough to make her Mother stay. Powers and Abilities A bullet-point list of the character's powers and mundane training goes here. Paraphernelia Do they have any cool gear? Equipment Any signature or specialized equipment or weapons go here. Weaknesses Notes --Play by actress is Emma Stone Trivia --Childhood crush was on Leonard Nemoy --Favorite color is blue --Can play the trombone, albeit poorly. --Owns an original gameboy and enjoys playing Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong, Zelda and Tetris. --Favorite comic book hero is X-Men's Beast --Favorite food is General Tsao's Chicken. Least favorite food is Eggplant. --Usually wears a pair of headphones, but doesn't always listen to music on them. --Favorite bands are The Aquabats, Anamanaguchi, Deadmau5, The Gorillaz, Daft Punk, Ellie Goulding, Weird Al and Richard Cheese. She also enjoys John Williams and a lot of video game music. --Favorite movie is Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back --Favorite book is "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" --Has a fondness for turtleneck sweaters and knee socks.